Lessons In Chemistry author Bonnie Garmus: I had a novel rejected 98 times

In her wildest dreams, former copywriter Bonnie Garmus could have never imagined that her debut novel Lessons In Chemistry would become the global phenomenon that it did.

She had already had one novel rejected 98 times and recalls that her agent, Felicity Blunt, sister of the actress Emily Blunt and married to actor Stanley Tucci, warned her that Lessons In Chemistry might be too quirky to interest publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

How wrong she was. The novel, set in Fifties and Sixties America, follows Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant research chemist in a misogynistic workplace who defies the sexist scientific establishment to become the host of a revolutionary TV cooking show, empowering millions of housewives to challenge societal norms.

It prompted a massive 16-publisher bidding war and a multi-million-dollar deal.

“I didn’t think it would ever get published,” she recalls, “and when it did I didn’t think it would sell more than 10 copies, and half of those would be from my own family.

“When it took off in Frankfurt we were both in shock.”

The book, published in 2022 when Garmus was 64, became a bestseller – funny, authentic, capturing the time and the mood of that era in the US and was soon adapted into a TV series starring Brie Larson.

Similarly, she couldn’t believe that a TV series based on her book was made.

“Everyone said, ‘Oh yeah, they’ll sign it and it’ll take 10 years. But it was out in 2023.”

She hasn’t watched it all but says that books and TV are different animals so she doesn’t have much to comment on the adaptation, except that she didn’t work on it.

Meeting Garmus today to discuss her second novel, Peck & Peck, she doesn’t seem fazed by the pressure some authors might feel over having such a tough act to follow.

“It never occurred to me. I think that’s the experience that age brings,” says Garmus, 69. “You really can’t fret about what people think all the time.”

That might seem pretty thick-skinned, given that Lessons In Chemistry was named by New York Times readers as one of the top 100 books of the 21st century, has been translated into 44 languages and spent almost 90 weeks in the Sunday Times’ top 10, as well as being honoured with a clutch of literary awards and selected by Queen Camilla for the Queen’s Reading Room online book club and charity.

But she insists: “There are big things going on in the world and I’m happy with the (new) book and whatever happens happens.”

Peck & Peck is set in 1982 in New York City and centres on a young college graduate, Batter Gray, a much maligned dreamer who has had a series of dead-end jobs but has an ear for poetry.

He is hired by Peck & Peck, the most prestigious poetry journal in the world, only to find himself unwittingly entrenched in the secret war between the Peck brothers – twins and enemies – one, a ruthless tycoon chasing the dollar, the other a true valuer of poetry who doesn’t care about monetising it.

Batter represents many young people unsure of their career paths and emphasises the significance of creativity, imagination and poetry, which Garmus feels is overlooked.

“It’s the poor stepchild of the arts. You don’t see people reading poetry on a plane. People don’t go into a bookshop and say, ‘What’s new in poetry?’

“Poetry is one of the very few arts that invariably tells the truth. Poets capture feelings with such economy. We turn to poetry at the most emotional events of our lives. We rely on poets every time someone dies or someone gets married or someone’s heart is broken.”

She chose the Eighties setting because it was just before computers took off.

“Back then we worried about plagiarism. Now we have widespread plagiarism, courtesy of AI. It’s almost like grand scale theft has been normalised. That’s the price of progress, well actually it’s not a price, it’s a punishment.

“It’s not something I believe should be legal or that we should applaud in any way possible. I don’t think it’s ok for people to use AI, other people’s work, without attribution or compensation, with their names taken off.

“The Eighties was almost a halcyon age before AI was heard. There have been so many warning shots from people, even in my industry. I worked in advertising but I did a lot of work in technology, where you’d sit in meetings and hear where people thought it could go, which was all about profit.”

She wants Peck & Peck to deliver a message of the importance of defending thought, new ideas, originality and creativity, she says.

“This idea that a machine is going to create this for us, create feelings for humans, seems way off the mark. But it’s a dangerous technology for one reason only – it is unregulated.

“The people who run it are billionaires and I don’t think we should be trusting these people with our future.”

“The internet is now a slop bucket of misinformation,” she continues.

California-born Garmus, the daughter of an entomologist and a nurse, moved to the UK in 2017 with her husband, software engineer David, who she met in her early 20s in a bookshop in Palo Alto, California. They have two grown-up adopted daughters, Zoe and Sophie.

She laughs when asked why she left it so long to become a novelist.

“I didn’t leave it so long. I was working as a copywriter. Copywriting is actually a lot like fiction writing which is why Salman Rushdie was a copywriter, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Tan – they were all copywriters.

“I did write another novel that was rejected 98 times, but while I dreamed of writing novels I had two young children, more than a full-time job, I was travelling a lot and I was on a rowing team. I just had so much going on.

“At the same time, there is never a time when you should say, ‘Well, I’m too old to do this’. And there should never be a time where you say, ‘Oh, I’m too young to do this’. Whenever you come to it is the right time.”

The success she has achieved from her first novel hasn’t gone to her head.

“When I see my friends, they say, ‘Oh my God, Bonnie, when are you going to start dressing better?’ or ‘Aren’t you going to start combing your hair now?’

“It hasn’t changed me fundamentally. I don’t care so much about the book as I care about the issues within the book.”

She and David bought their home in Essex before Lessons In Chemistry was published, after his job transferred from Seattle and Switzerland to England. He’s always the first to read her manuscripts.

“He’s the most well-read person I’ve ever met in my entire life. He may be an astrophysicist, a mathematician, but he knows every single character in Pride And Prejudice.”

Peck & Peck was written mostly when she was on planes, on her way to tours and events promoting Lessons In Chemistry. She had the idea before Lessons In Chemistry but it has taken her five years to complete.

There has been some interest from production companies about adapting Peck & Peck, but Garmus isn’t in any hurry.

“I know Hollywood is buying a lot less, but no matter what happens, I’m happy. I think Hollywood would rather that the author just fade into the woodwork and I can’t blame them.”

Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus is published in hardback by Manilla Press, priced £22. Available now